The National Geographic Magazine
I'ron Capt. Hobert A. Bartlett
Mosquitoes Are Myriad but Not Malarial in Greenland
An archeologist, digging among Eskimo ruins on the
might be driven almost mad. On Baffin Island Ar
stone hill struck me as an oyster-shell dump
grown beyond all reason. From it I sent
specimens to my friend, Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt,
Head Curator of Biology of the U. S. National
Museum.
Selections for the Museum's botanists
we gathered from the fields, which in summer
were ablaze with wild flowers. Bumblebees
flew from flower to flower gathering honey.
Even the nonflowering mosses were colorful.
Wild blueberries pleased the eye and the appe
tite. These plants had a brief life, but it was
filled with sunshine.
Our party took color photographs as late as
11:30 p. m.
Summer had one drawback. At times it
seemed you could scarcely see the sky for the
swarms of mosquitoes.
We photographed
thousands perched on a major's tent. Work
men wore gloves and head nets as protection.
We on the Morrissey, protected by the
winds, were scarcely bothered at all.
The Morrissey Sails for Greenland
When the ice started forming in October,
we shoved off for New York and parted com
pany with our friends at Crystal Two. The
Morrissey wintered at Staten Island, New
York.
east coast, carries gloves and head net; otherwise he
nerican troops fought clouds of voracious mosquitoes.
We were working for the Army in the sum
mer of 1944 when we sailed for Greenland.
Greenland's rugged coasts, marble glaciers,
and skyscraper icebergs have not failed to
thrill me since the first time I sailed with
Admiral Robert E. Peary in 1898. There you
can forget civilization's worries.*
Four-fifths of its 827,300 square miles are
locked beneath the icecap. This frozen sea
covers all the interior to a maximum known
depth of 8,850 feet. The thermometer some
times sinks to 850 below zero in the lofty
interior regions. Ceaseless winds raise a cur
tain of snow which works its way into ex
plorers' clothes like icy water.
Along narrow ribbons of glacier-free coast
line the Greenlanders, a mixture of Eskimos
and whites, carry on their sealing, fishing,
gardening, and mining. There were some
20,000 of them at the last count, and all but
a few hundred lived on the west coast.
* See, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE,
"Greenland from 1898 to Now," by Robert A. Bart
lett, July, 1940; "Peary's Explorations in the Far
North," by Gilbert Grosvenor, April, 1920; "Peary
as a Leader," by Donald B. MacMillan, April, 1920;
"Greenland Turns to America," by James K. Pen
field, September, 1942; "Desolate Greenland, Now an
American Outpost," 17 ills., September, 1941; and
"Coast Guard Patrol in Greenland," 9 ills. in color,
May, 1943.
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